Chess Basics

Chess is one of the world’s most popular games. It’s a two-player contest that involves intellect, creativity, and surprise. Playing chess is not only entertaining and rewarding, it’s also an excellent mental exercise.

Chess is played on a square board broken up into 64 small squares on an 8×8 grid. The small squares alternate between a light color and a dark color.

Players sit on opposite sides of the board so that the square to each player’s immediate right (the lower right and upper left corners in the diagram) is light-colored.

At the beginning of the game, each player has 16 pieces:

One player’s pieces are white, or light, while the other player’s pieces are black, or dark. To set up a chessboard, the pieces are placed in two rows directly in front of each player in the positions shown in the illustration. In the diagrams in this guide, it’s assumed that the player using white pieces sits at the bottom of the board and black sits at the top. Once game play begins, the different pieces play different roles and move in different ways across the board (for details on each type of chess piece, see Chess Pieces).

When setting up the board, pay particular attention to the positions of the king and queen. The rule for placing these pieces correctly is queen on color. In other words:

In a game of chess, the two players—referred to as white and black, based on the color of their pieces—alternate moves, beginning with white. Each player makes one move per turn by moving a piece. A player may not move a piece onto a square already occupied by one of that player’s own pieces. With the exception of the knight, pieces also may not skip over squares occupied by any other pieces.

If a player moves onto a square occupied by one of his or her opponent’s pieces, the opponent’s piece is captured and removed from play. Often, in order to capture one of your opponent’s pieces you’ll have to sacrifice (allow your opponent to capture) one of your pieces. A capture coupled with a sacrifice is called an exchange or a trade.

Check occurs when a player’s king is under attack from the opposing player’s pieces. It is customary for a player to announce “Check!” when he or she has placed the opponent in check. If your king is in check, you are required to save it from attack immediately by either moving the king or moving another piece in a way that blocks the attack.

The object of chess is to checkmate your opponent. Checkmate occurs when a king is in check and there’s no way to save the king from attack in one move.